Do you need Push in your SL?

Nah. To play, an avatar would sit inside a ball and have their control input passed on to the machine. The bumpers, new ball stopper, and other random features pushed the ball with the avatar inside.

However, my understanding is SL still treats this as acting on the avatar. Partially due to the combat system.

Heh heh, I was thinking of a more conventional pinball system. I should have known better given that I was dealing with Jeffrey Gomez.

My point is that when people object to push, they don't necessarily mean they object to every possible instance of push. I think they probably mean something more like "I don't want to get knocked out of the sim by a stranger by surprise".

I'm not sure that land ownership is the sole correct basis for the permission system.

To try somewhat to answer the question in the thread title, I can see there being a virtual environment system that people would enjoy that has no abilty for the users to knock other's user's around.

Personally, I'd rather get a pop-up if something or someone one wants to push me as I said above, and I'd really rather not be over-ridden by the land owner.

There are some legitimate uses of push that nevertheless require timing and/or the element of surprise to work effectively. Pop up "do you want to be pushed" windows shouldn't be mandatory, to allow things like this to work.

I think you all concentrating too much as llPush. You should really be concerned about scriptable effects on physical objects to include variations on push such as impulse etc. The real question should be how we limit the physical interactions without our permissions. People developing physical weapons for griefers will find other ways to abuse avatars via the physics engine.

Ed

See my proposal further up, where I recomend a check box to allow a source to push again without having to ask again.

As for things that reqwuire the element of surprise...I've had enough surprises for the present. If something like that is important to to an individual user, they can set to allow themselves to always be suceptible to push (Which I also mentioned in my prior post.) if they so desire.

At this point, push and it's cousins have been so badly abused that I'm flat out unwilling to settle for anything less than complete control over my avatar's succeptability to it. I no longer trust *anyone* else to make that decision for me, including land owners.

Seriously, why is it that so many people seem to object so strongly to giving individual users a choice in this matter? Shouldn't it be *my* decision, not anyone elses?

Or better, the owner of that source. I've got a transport system involving chains of prims that give you a push as you pass by. Wouldn't work if you had to give permission to each prim as you go.

Yes, it should be your decision, but it shouldn't break things for you either by bad design.

Hmm.. I think you should be able to disable push on your avatar (and have it off by default), and include an LSL function to detect whether the av. has it turned on or off. Maybe even request permissions to push?

AMEN! Atleast when i play THERE.com i have this ability...

I'm still trying to find out where the hell all of you are going that your getting orb'd every 5 minutes. I spend most of my nights in popular clubs and at waterhead and with the exception of a few buddies goofing off I RARELY get orb'd or anything (Once a week if that). To add on top of this I'm a furry, and a cantankerous sumbitch so you think people would be making me a victim left and right.

I mean I hang out at a freaking welcome area, its usually griefer central there.

Maybe everyone just likes me

Yeah, no doubt. I agree!! I hardly EVER get griefed. LOLZ.

Are you all hanging out in fur sims?

Nope, actually just staying at home building and minding my own business, and not in a busy area.

The thing is, it really *has* gotten worse. I had to deal with griefers maybe four times in the year before 6-6-06, since then I've had at least half a dozen incidents on my land, and all a lot worse than my pre6-6-06 experiences.

I think that you guys have just been lucky so far.

So griefers just broke into your house guns ablazing?

I have 1/4 sim, they have come onto my land guns blazing a number of times, sometimes attacking my neighbors, (From my land when I wasn't there.) sometimes attacking me when I was there.

I had to set out a security orb on my land with permission given to my neighbors to add people to it, and wound up giving a security orb to one neighbor in order to keep them from turning on the general ban lines to protect themselves.

I've owned this land for nearly a year and I've *never* had problems like this before.

On Wed., I turned on the land ban for people with unverified accounts for the land closest to my neighbors, so that people griefing with unverified alts can't keep coming back with new alts every time their name gets added to the banned list.

I bet people who make security orbs are making some uber cassh right now.
If not, they need to be. :/

And the shield makers. A lot of people who've been heavily griefed (Like my neighbor and myself anyway.) seem to be running out to buy the latest in shield technology.

With security orbs and shields, I think I've spent about $L4500 so far, and I'm looking at more than that if I want to get enough orbs to cover my land.

Yea and i don't recomend shield. they don't really work. as long as a sensor can activate push on anyone it detects, a shield is kinda useless. :/ I just sit on a llSetPos based vehicle ball and peddle around. It is a pain having to rez a new one each time i teleport, but eh.. :/

The one I picked up aparently does that as well.

IMO of course, we shouldn't need to do *any* of that, but that's the position that LL has put us in currently.

These are the two most important things to consider when we think about how to effectively change llPushObject to make it less easily used for griefing. The thing is, there are a lot of things I want to do (and already do) in my builds that involve gentle pushes that really lend to the ambience of the place. If I don't think that they're going to work consistently for everyone who shows up, I won't be able to use them at all.

Imagine a big industrial fan that gently pushes people back when they walk near it. Say a group of people show up, and only 2 or so have the "allow people to push me" option on. Two people will start gently sliding back from the fan, and the rest won't. It'd look horrible.

Even worse is the idea of making an ask-first permission system. It would presumably use the existing llRequestPermissions system. Right off the bat, things that used llPushObject() are going to spew ugly little errors all over the place about permissions. People will walk up to my supposed industrial fan, it'll ask if they want to be pushed, and, on the offchance that someone actually says yes (like if I name it "Industrial fan PLEASE LET ME PUSH YOU IT LOOKS COOL", it'll start pushing them... after they've already left the area, possibly.

A permissions dialog like that completely brings visitors out of the world I'm trying to build for them. I want them to walk up, and suddenly find themselves slipping gently back, having to run to counteract the push of the fan. The mood is going to be completely lost if they have to say "yes" first to let this happen, or, worse yet, if it only happens to them and not their friends. Chances are, people are going to walk right on past my fan before getting around to answering the permission dialog, too.

The thing is, if you give people the option of "do you want to be pushed?", NEARLY EVERYONE will say no. It's how people work. I mean, if there's an option in preferences, "allow other people to push you with scripts", who's actually going to say yes? It really doesn't make any sense to, when it's phrased like that. "Do you want to allow people to drop 50 pound rocks on your feet?" It's a no-brainer. And that means that content creators who want to use llPushObject constructively really can't rely on it. People like me would probably start thinking about rezzing little transparent objects to push people around. It'd be ugly. Please don't make me do that.

The big problem with push right now is that you can just push things WAY too hard. When avatar terminal velocity seems to be locked in the physics engine to 50m/s, why should I be able to push an avatar with a strength that would effectively send them rocketing away at kilometers per second? A cap on pushing SPEED might be useful. It seems to me that the max push speeds simply cause horrible instabilities in the physics engine and the client.

Since that terminal velocity is 50m/s, let us push an equivalent of 100m/s (strength depends on avatar mass) so that we can stop an object going 50m/s and send them 50m/s in the opposite direction with a push that's exactly opposite to the direction of their velocity. Maybe even allow people to specify a maximum push speed that people may impart on their avatar, but I'd really appreciate it if the minimum allowed setting wasn't 0. Even 5m/s would be much more useful than 0, and it's not going to hurt anyone.

I think that a good enough solution would be a "no outside push" parcel flag. This would let you say that no one other than you (or members of a group if the group owns a parcel) may use llPushObject on any object other than their own (that's important). Namely, if you set this flag on your land, I can't push you, my objects can't push you, my objects can't push your other guests, and my objects can't push their objects or your objects. My objects still can push me or my other objects. That last is important: you've really got to be careful not to limit functionality that you don't need to limit, because it might prevent people from trying to do cool stuff that they want to do in the future. There's no harm in allowing my objects to push me on your land. The flag should also prevent people outside your land from pushing people inside your land, and vice versa.

With this flag set, I should still be able to push anyone and any object on my own land, without permission. Sure, that lets me orbit you... but you have to go to my land for me to be able to do that. It makes sense, really... you should have inherently fewer rights while you're a guest on my land. If I orbit you, abuse report me, and tell all of your friends, and pretty soon no one will come to my land, and that kind of ruins the point of building something for public consumption. That means that trust and reputation lead me to use my pushing power only for "good".

As well, people will avoid land that doesn't have this flag set, spreading its use. People without land will tend to frequent areas where they know they'll be safe from pushes, because this option is set, and because the owner of the land has not been known to abuse their "power" and orbit people.

It might be nice to add in the push-with-permission idea on top of this. If I'm on your land and it has this option set, it'd be kind of cool if my stuff could still push someone else on your land, if they granted it permission first. Not reqired, though... if I really want to push people, I can pay for some land to get the privilege.

The critically important thing is that there needs to be some method for me, if I'm inclined, to be able to build things that push people consistently without interrupting the flow and mood by popping up an annoying permission dialog. Push is NOT all bad, and I'd be very upset to see it completely removed, or nerfed into being a completely non-viable option by the fact that most people will disallow any pushes whatsoever, given the chance.

Something like what I've outlined simultaneously drastically reduces the ability for griefers to use llPushObject as a griefing tool and still protects my ability to use llPushObject effectively as a tool for making my builds cooler, while using trust and reputation to limit my actions to "nice" uses of push.

Excellent points Lex. Nothing to add really other than my support to the "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater" view.

I think you are overreacting, Lex. Ok, how about, "Will you allow this (elevator, car, whatever) to push your avatar"? I mean, if they are trying to use the thing in the first place, why should they freak?

The industrial fan example breaks that though. It's cool because you didn't know it was going to happen. Suffugium has some cool "force field" cells in the police station, that push you back when you try to walk through them. "Will you let this police cell push you?" would destroy the immersion dead.

What is a security orb?

See the proposal that I made previously. You allow people to give permission to say "yes" to being pushed by a certain person's devices, and make it stick.

So in the examples above, you have some gadget when they first start ask permission to push them, and ask the user to please give permission for other items from the same owner to continue to push them so that they can experience the rest of the build.

I mean yes, it's more of a nusiance for the builder, but being being griefed with weapons being based on "push" and it's cousins has become a *lot* more than a nusiance.

The people who want to be able to control pushes against their own avatars are being perfectly reasonable and willing to compromise, but we're *not* willing to compromise the basic principal that *we* and no one else should have the ultimate say on who's allowed to push our avatars and who isn't.

Seriously?

It's esentially a device that allows you to automate ejecting avatars from your land, based on an updatable list. It's generally set to scan every 10 seconds or so, and give an intruding avatar a warning before activating. although it can be set to eject without a warning.

It's more useful than the land banning tools, since it can be set to ban above a higher altitude, and to allow people who aren't property owners to ban people when the owner isn't there.